The present invention relates to the area of active carbon (i.e. activated carbon) for medicinal use. In particular, the present invention relates to the use of a particulate active carbon having high microporosity for human medicinal or veterinary medicinal use. In addition, the present invention relates to a pharmaceutical composition which contains a particulate active carbon of this type and is suitable for human medicinal or veterinary medicinal use.
Active carbon, in particular in the form of “medicinal carbon” is administered in the field of medicine, in particular for the adsorption of poisonous substances, bacteria, gases etc. in the gastrointestinal tract. Diarrhoeal complaints (diarrhoea) and poisoning are the main field of application. In the case of the administration of active carbon in poisoning, the active carbon prevents absorption, in the case of poisoning with substances which are subject to an enterohepatic circulation (e.g. carbamazepine, phenobarbital, phenylbutazone, theophylline etc.), and leads to an acceleration of their elimination.
For further details on the medicinal use of active carbon, reference can be made, for example, to Römpp Chemielexikon [Römpp's Chemical Encyclopaedia], 10th Edition, Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart/New York, keywords: “Active carbon” and “Medicinal carbon”, and to Pschyrembel Medizinisches Wörterbuch [Pschyrembel's Medical Dictionary], 257th Edition, 1993, Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft mbH Hamburg, keyword: “Active carbon”, and the literature in each case reviewed there.
For the medicinal fields of application of acute diarrhoea, for the prevention of absorption in the case of oral poisoning and for the acceleration of excretion in poisoning with substances which are subject to an enterohepatic circulation, commercially available preparations based on pulverulent medicinal active carbon in the form of “comprettes” are available. The pulverulent active carbon available, however, does not always offer optimal performance characteristics for the aforementioned fields of application.
In addition, active carbon in the form of spherical particles having sizes of 0.05 to 2 mm have already been proposed for other medicinal uses, namely for the treatment of haemorrhoidal complaints (EP 0 688 566 B1), for the treatment of inflammatory diseases of the bowel such as, for example, Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis (EP 0 688 567 B1) and also for the treatment of peripheral inflammation of the stoma (EP 0 688 568 B1). However, even the spherical active carbon described in the aforementioned publications does not always fulfil the demands which are made on a medicinal active carbon.
The active carbon prepared from phenolic resin beads by carbonization and subsequent activation according to EP 1 440 692 B1 also does not always fulfil the desired demand profile which is made on a medicinal active carbon.